Personal information is defined in the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act as recorded information about an identifiable individual, other than contact information, which is information to enable an individual at a place of business to be contacted and includes the name, position name or title, business telephone number, business address, business email, or business fax number of the individual.

When you contact BC Ferries in person, by phone, by e-mail or through our online services (our website or our mobile application), use our online services or create an account for our online services, you may voluntarily provide personal information, such as your:

• Personal name;
• Personal contact information, including email, mailing address, telephone number and fax number;
• Login and password information;
• Credit card information;
• Travel reservation, booking and other transaction details;
• Vacation arrangements; and
• Other details related to the subject matter you are communicating with us about.

BC Ferries collects your personal information in accordance with section 26 of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. We may collect your personal information to:

• Provide you with the information, products and services that you request or purchase from us;
• Administer your account or process your reservations and other transactions with us;
• Process payments with our payment services provider(s), including detecting and preventing fraud;
• Confirm your identity and provide customer service;
• Facilitate your travel and your BC Ferries Vacations arrangements;
• Enable your use of our mobile application;
• Support public health, including contact tracing;
• Generate your transaction or travel history with us;
• Comply with Transport Canada regulations or other statutory, legal or regulatory requirements; and
• Contact and correspond with you, including providing you with important information and updates about the product or service you purchased, sending you notifications and information you have requested or consented to receive, obtaining your input or feedback on your travel or on your vacations packages, or communicating with you about commercial or administrative matters. In addition, only if you opt to receive such communications, we may send you promotional information and other notices about our products, services and offers which we or our computer systems have identified as potentially of interest to you based on your purchasing history and preferences.

You can choose not to provide certain requested personal information, but then you may not be able to use certain products or services provided by BC Ferries or access or use certain features of our online services.

Personal information is normally collected directly from you but may also be received from a third party, such as a travel agent acting on your authority or from a credit card service provider if the information is for the purpose of making an online payment to BC Ferries, or as otherwise collected by BC Ferries in accordance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

Your personal information will be used and disclosed only as authorized or required by the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act or other applicable law. We may disclose your personal information, for instance, to our employees or our service providers who need it to perform their duties and to others in specific circumstances, such as:

• Payment processors;
• When the products and services we are providing to you require us to give information to third parties, such as third party suppliers or agents of products and services you have purchased (for example, vacation services or accommodation);
• Law enforcement;
• Emergency contacts;
• Civil proceedings; and
• Auditors, regulators or insurers.

BC Ferries complies with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act’s requirements regarding the storage of personal information outside Canada.

Unless we have your consent, we will only use your information for the purpose it was obtained or compiled, or for a use consistent with that purpose, or otherwise as is permitted by the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

If you have any questions about the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information, please contact us. 

BC Ferries does not sell or rent your personal information to third parties.

You have the ability to accept cookies through our website, which will reside on your computer, that third party marketing and advertising organizations can use either to display advertising on our website or to place our advertising on other websites you might visit. See digital markers and behavioural advertising below for further details. For more information about cookies, how BC Ferries uses them, and your options for disabling them, please see our cookie policy.

The personal information you post on social media with respect to BC Ferries, including on our social media presences, may be collected by us under section 26 of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act for the purposes of engaging and consulting with the public and promotion respecting proposed or existing initiatives, policies, proposals, programs or activities of BC Ferries; to make service enhancements where necessary; for follow-up as required; or for a use consistent with those purposes. Please be aware that personal information you disclose on social media with respect to BC Ferries may be disclosed, stored and/or accessed on servers not belonging to BC Ferries. To protect your privacy and the privacy of others, please do not include any contact information including names, phone numbers or e-mail addresses in the body of your comment. Please do not share personal information about others, including pictures, unless you have their consent or the authority to do so.

When you visit BC Ferries’ website, our web server may automatically collect certain information, such as:

• IP (internet protocol) address of your device;
• Domain name;
• Type of device;
• Operating system;
• Browser type;
• Pages viewed;
• Origin of a referral to BC Ferries' website (called a traffic source; e.g., Google.com);
• Users and number of sessions (called unique visitors and volume of visits);
• City/region/country of origin;
• Session flow;
• Products and services purchased;
• Revenue generated; and
• Content downloaded.

BC Ferries also uses cookie-less tracking, which records the interactions and engagement of visitors, without collecting information about identifiable individuals.

We may use this information for our internal purposes and for sharing with other organizations with which we have a commercial relationship. This information is used to administer our website, to monitor and measure its use and protect its security, to improve its functionality and content, to provide you with the products and services you have requested or purchased, and to provide you with the best possible web experience.

When you install and use BC Ferries’ mobile application, you may set preferences to enhance your personal user experience.  This includes, for example, managing your travel preferences and your favourite travel routes.

You are also able choose through your device settings to receive push notifications.  These are short messages sent by the BC Ferries mobile application to your device’s screen or desktop and might include, for example, alerts or details about upcoming sailings or other products you have purchased.  If you choose to receive push notifications from the BC Ferries mobile application, these notifications may appear on your device’s screen or desktop regardless of whether you are logged in or logged out of the mobile application.

BC Ferries’ mobile application uses services from Google LLC. (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA) and Apple Inc. (One Apple Park Way, Cupertino, CA 95014).  BC Ferries’ mobile application uses Google and Apple services so we can monitor the mobile application’s performance, track overall trends and usage, protect its security, improve its functionality and content and otherwise administer it.  We also use Google and Apple services to provide you with the information, services or products you have requested or purchased from us, to identify opportunities to provide you with the best possible user experience and as described in above under the collection, use & disclosure of personal information. 

Currently, BC Ferries uses the following services that may collect user information:

• Apple App Store;
• Google Play Store;
• Google Firebase Analytics;
• Google Firebase Performance Monitoring;
• Google Firebase Crashlytics;
• Google Firebase Cloud Messaging.

Google and Apple services may collect certain information, such as:

• IP (internet protocol) address of your device;
• Mobile application-instance identifiers (a string of characters specific to the installation of BC Ferries’ mobile application on your device);
• Push notification engagements (indicates push notifications marked as read);
• Preference setting engagements (indicates the preferences you have selected);
• Number and duration of sessions (visits to screens within the mobile application);
• Type of device and operating system;
• City/region/country of access;
• First time you launched the mobile application;
• Number of times the mobile application has been opened and the number of purchases through the mobile application;
• Mobile application updates;
• Mobile application uninstall; and
• Mobile application error statistics.

You can learn more about the information Google and Apple collect, how they use that information and how you can manage your privacy controls for their services:

• How Google collects and processes information;
• Google Firebase’s privacy and security; and
• How Apple collects and processes information.

You can opt out of Google Analytics by following the instructions from Google.
 

BC Ferries’ online services include links to other websites or mobile applications (“third parties”). When you click on one of those links, including downloading our mobile application from the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store, you are contacting a third party and BC Ferries’ privacy statement does not apply to those third parties. BC Ferries has no responsibility or liability for or control over those third parties or their collection, use and disclosure of your personal information. If you access a third party’s website or mobile application through our online services, you should read that third party’s privacy policy to determine its privacy practices.

A digital marker is created by a website visitor’s Internet browser, or a mobile application visitor’s operating system, to maintain certain pieces of information for reference during the same or subsequent visits. Examples of digital markers are cookies, HTML5 Web storage and mobile application instance identifiers. Among other things, digital markers can allow websites or mobile applications to recognize a previous visit each time the visitor accesses a website or mobile application, and track what information is viewed.

BC Ferries uses sessional and persistent digital markers on some portions of our online services. Digital markers are created when you visit our online services. Sessional markers exist while you actively engage with our online services, and persistent markers continue to exist after you have left our website or closed our mobile application.

During your visit, your Internet browser and operating system exchange data with BC Ferries’ online services. However, the digital markers used by us do not allow us to identify individuals unless a visitor specifically informs us of their identity, e.g., booking online or sending us correspondence through our online services.

For more information about cookies, how BC Ferries uses them, and your options for disabling them, please see our cookie policy.

We may partner with third party marketing and advertising organizations either to display advertising on our website or to manage our advertising on other websites. Our third party partners may use technologies such as cookies and eTags to gather information about your activities on our website and other websites in order to provide you with advertising based upon your browsing activities and interests. We ask for your consent before using these technologies with you. If you consent but no longer wish to have this information used for the purpose of serving you interest-based ads, you may opt-out of BC Ferries’ marketing cookies by clicking here and by following the directions included in BC Ferries’ cookie policy to remove cookies from your browser that you may have previously accepted.

Our online services include social media features, such as the Facebook Like button and the X App Post button. These features may collect your IP address and which page you are visiting on our site, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features are hosted by third parties. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it.

BC Ferries will add you to our electronic subscription lists only if you provide your consent. If you choose to receive service notices, newsletters, special offers and promotions, news releases or other electronic messages from BC Ferries we will, where legally required, provide our contact information and a method to unsubscribe from receiving further electronic messages from us with each electronic message we send you. Please note unsubscribe requests may not apply to non-promotional electronic messages, such as receipts for purchases, information on the status of your purchase, booking confirmations or notices of any changes to your itinerary. In addition, if you unsubscribe you may still receive electronic messages where such messages are required or permitted by law, including Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation.

BC Ferries collects information about recipients of the onBoard newsletter, including on-page user interaction, also known as click and read activity. This information is used to understand customer interest in the newsletter, including particular promotions, news and contests. BC Ferries will use this information to tailor our communications with individual customers only if they have first consented.

BC Ferries may run contests or conduct online surveys. Your participation in contests or surveys is entirely voluntary. Contest or survey information, such as age or other restrictions, can be found along with the specific contest or survey details.

BC Ferries may also generate analyses and aggregated data (collectively, “Aggregated Data”) derived from personal information we collect and from the use of BC Ferries’ online services, products and services. Aggregated Data will anonymize and aggregate information, and will be the sole property of BC Ferries. The identity and personal information of individuals will be kept anonymous in Aggregated Data. We may use Aggregated Data for our internal purposes and for sharing with other organizations with which we have a commercial relationship. Aggregated Data may be used for purposes such as developing or enhancing products and services that meet the needs of our customers, and for marketing. 

Access and correction: You may request access to your personal information and/or correction of that information by contacting us at the address noted below. If you seek records containing your personal information in electronic form, we will provide copies of the records in that form with our response, where it is reasonable to do so. Visit our freedom of information page for more details.

Processing: You may request details about how we process your personal information. Subject to legal, regulatory or other requirements or circumstances, we will tell you:
 

• Whether your personal information is being collected, used or disclosed, the categories of personal information, and the purposes for so doing; and
• Recipients or categories of recipients to whom your personal information has been disclosed.

Consent: Where BC Ferries has asked for and you have given BC Ferries your written consent to use or disclose your personal information for a specific purpose, you may at any time contact us to withdraw your consent on a go-forward basis, unless your consent was given as part of a contractual agreement. If you choose to withdraw your consent, you understand you may not be able to use or receive certain products or services provided by BC Ferries that relate to that consent. Please note that if you withdraw consent BC Ferries may still collect, use, store, and disclose your personal information where required or permitted by law, including the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

Accuracy: You can help BC Ferries maintain the accuracy of your information by notifying us of any changes to your personal information. When you contact us to request a change, we may ask for further details to confirm your identity or the request. If you have an account on our online services, you can update your details when you sign in.

BC Ferries securely retains and disposes of personal information in accordance with our records retention schedules. The period of the retention of your personal information will vary depending on why it was collected, and on business, administrative, legal, financial or other factors. BC Ferries retains your personal information for at least one year if it has been used to make a decision affecting you.

BC Ferries takes reasonable steps to protect your personal information. We use technological, physical and administrative procedures intended to prevent the unauthorized access, collection, disclosure, copying, use, modification, or disposal of personal information.

Although we have security measures in place, you should be aware there is an element of risk whenever you send or receive information using the Internet. You should always carefully consider what information you choose to share. It is also your responsibility to safeguard your user identifications, passwords or any other special identifiers used to access our online services.

BC Ferries may review and update this privacy statement from time to time to ensure it is consistent with current privacy management and online services administration practices. As a result, you should visit this page periodically to review the contents of our privacy statement.